As asylum looks like being a key election issue, Caroline Moore- head reminds us of one simple truth. No one wants to be a refugee. No one wants to leave their home. They do so out of desperation, tortured, raped, witnessing terrifying abuse, or in terrible, straitened circumstances. Of course not all would-be immigrants are in fear of their lives, but a remarkably large percentage turn out to be so, and some 40 per cent are eventually granted refugee status or given exceptional leave to remain.
Before all that, they will have paid vast sums to people-traffickers for perilous and terrifying journeys. Then, on arrival, their lives are subject to confusing legal processes, to insufficient money, to dispersal around the country, and to loneliness and abuse. Moorehead tells the story of how, when asylum-seekers were first dispersed to Byker, in Newcastle, their children were called monkeys and given urine to drink by other local children. Suicide is not uncommon amongst asylum-seekers, with self-mutilation a regular occurrence, for many of these children and young people will have seen parents and siblings tortured and killed in horrific circumstances.
For all that, Moorehead does not believe all the stories. She is nobody’s fool. Refugees and asylum-seekers soon learn to say nothing, to throw away such identifying papers as they have, to say they come from somewhere other than their home, as it might give them a better chance of being allowed to stay. Rumours abound; stories get elaborated. And yet there is real horror and despair. She tells the story of a group of young Liberian boys in Cairo, whose lives were absolutely at the margins, who had witnessed terrible things. But they still dared to hope.
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